It’s on! We’re building a MAN

Last week was full of activity. Not easy, but very rewarding in the end.

First, the very most exciting news – the great people of the Allied Drive neighborhood voted to create our first Mutual Aid Network right in Allied Drive, the Allied Coop. We established weekly office hours and a plan to move forward on incorporating. We started some need and asset mapping, working out how we can pool the money we save on energy and use it to insure and maintain a van for the neighborhood – we just need to get a van. Then Deacon Tony Williams told us he recently purchased a 14-seat van that he will agree to let us use on behalf of the coop! Tomorrow we meet to create an agreement. We plan to use the van to take young people on outings, provide medical and other needed transportation, and do food shopping trips. Fantastic!

This meeting was one of the most uplifting things that’s happened to me this year. You can read the notes here.

The next day the Legal issues work group of the MAN Design Team met to begin hammering out details about our structure and our process for implementation. Like I said, not easy! But very rewarding. Hopefully for everyone, ultimately.

I won’t bore you with the details but they are available in the notes here. And in updated, still-in-progress writing on the MAN overall, here.

That’s all for now. Still in progress on the Knit a Network effort to use the kinds of cooperation, sharing and exchange that we espouse to connect our various efforts into a more functional ecosystem. More updates to come!

Help the MAN out

Testimonials:

The best part of my job as Creative Director of Mutual Aid Networks is reminding people that we can dream bigger and better than we’re used to, that we don’t need to be bound by a scarcity mindset, and working together we can make our big dreams into reality.
- Stephanie Rearick, Madison, WI